In full summer mode

Two weeks...three movies...it's like summer has already begun...

Had to give Iron Man a try. It killed me that The Girl was out of town on premier weekend and asked me to wait 'til she was back, but with prom and such, I managed a fun weekend anyway.

The quick version - kind of like the reviews have said, Iron Man is good, but certainly not great.

The actors are marvelously well chosen - particularly Robert Downey, Jr as the lead. The special effects show another leap forward in letting us actually believe that the Iron Man suit could do all the things it's supposed to do - light years better than the early Spider-Man swings that look positively archaic at this point. The story is a standard - and believable - enough introductory tale showing how Stark could have been both motivated and talented enough to develop the initial - and two subsequent - suits. Plus the writers throw in enough nods to the comic geek - SHIELD, Jarvis, Iron Monger, War Machine, the starting-to-get-annoying Stan Lee cameo, the after-the-credits scene - to let me truly geek out.

The movie never quite rises above a solid introduction film, however - probably because the villian just didn't quite seem threatening enough in spite of his overall dudeness.

They've set themselves up brilliantly for more Iron Man flicks, however, and hopefully the ultimate goal of the new Marvel Studios with The Avengers.

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On the recommendation of G-Rob & really strong reviews, I got The Girl to sit down and watch Once on Saturday night.

Be warned that if you give Once a chance, the accents are thick - enough that I had to turn the subtitles on in the beginning of the film. As the film gets moving - and there's honestly not a lot of movement in the film - however, the accent became easier and easier to understand - though there were a couple times when I had to pause and replay a line or two.

The film tells the story of two musicians - one a street busker and the other a pianist who happens upon him playing his original songs. They take a couple of hesitating romantic steps toward each other at first but settle for something much deeper as they - and a trio of other musicians - record an album in the few days that they have together as the lead character announces his intentions to depart Dublin when the recording is completed.

The bulk of the tale is told through music - the director estimates in a DVD extra that a full 60% of the film's running time involves the characters playing and/or singing together. The songs aren't literal story songs, moving the story forward in any exact fashion, but the increasing intimacy of the performances between the two leads conveys everything that needs to be told.

The film reminded me very much of Lost in Translation in that both tales could easily be told as simply boy meets girl, instead the writers decided to take a different tact and make a hell of a film.

Once isn't quite the equal of Translation, and The Girl did admit to the slow pace getting to her after a while (she even used the bored word), but this is a little gem of a film.

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I would never have chosen Gone Baby Gone - the previews suggested something far too dark for my tastes, something a little too complex an emotional for my tastes.

Blowing this one off would've been a total mistake, however, as it was easily the best film of the trio this time. The Afleck's together have put together an outstanding film - Casey in the lead and Ben behind the camera - oddly set in Boston (believe it or not).

Casey's lead character is a private investigator searching for delinquent payees who steps up in joining the search for a lost little girl beside Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman's police force. Afleck and Michelle Monaghan as his girlfriend, have a discussion quite early on wondering whether they really want to take the case, if their comfortable life really needs the added pressure of a higher-profile case.

The entire movie hinges on that choice - whether the situation as it is would be better left or whether a change and all the earth-shattering, moral-comprimising ramifications that might be involved. And there are no easy answers to be found in any point of the film.

I don't look for movies that make me think, that require me to consider whether the choices made by the characters were the right choices or not.

This film, however, does exactly that, and I probably would've swapped it in for Blood Will Run in last year's best picture Oscar race - in spite of some weaker reviews.